Found Lost Post hooray!

When comparing, and contrasting both of these pieces I find my self wondering who the authors intended their audience to be. They are obviously both stories of how the Earth came to be, however The Epic of Creation seems to reflect more of a story plot line, rather than a lyrical description of the birth of Earth, as we find in Metamorphoses. The most noteable similarity in my humble opinion would be the descriptions of Earth, or whatever this place was, before the Gods decided to have a divine intervention with the matter at hand. Both stories describe Earth prior to any divine act being a place of utter chaos. Now when I first read these stories, I assumed chaos was something like what I witnessed on 9/11 all those years ago. However Scott gave me some insight that helped me think better of this word. Chaos, as you described in class is simply a lack of order. I may be assuming, or guessing on this one, but perhaps the chaos is exactly as you described it to the class in both these authors minds. Maybe chaos is not synonymous with violence? With that being said I think in both of these stories the authors were trying to convey the idea that the Divine, or the Gods of this time, were the fathers, and mothers of order, and peace. Something I also felt was important enough not to leave out on this post was the description of the Gods from each of these stories. In Metamorphoses the author refers to the divine as, "Till God, or kindlier of nature"(Humphries 168). We also see on the following page that he refers to the Creator as, "Whatever God it was, who out of chaos brought order to the universe and gave it division".(Humphries 169). We see here that the author gives no name, or any real claim of allegiance by this god to any formal religious group. Where as in The Epic of Creation we see multiple example of Gods, they are specifically named, and they even procreated, giving way to the idea of offspring of the Gods...crazy right? My final thought will be on the introduction of each of these stories because they are amazingly similar. In metamorphoses the first few lines are as follows, "Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven. Nature was all alike, shapeless. Chaos so called ruled the lumpy matter".(Humphries 168). We see the same idea, almost verbatim in The Epic of Creation when the author states. " When the skies above were not yet named, nor Earth below pronounced by name.."(Dally 146). These similarities are amazingly obvious that even a common fool could make the comparison. I believe that both of these stories follow a similar structure, and pattern. So far as motives are concerned I believe that it speculatory at best, and would imagine it was simply to convey a common message to the future world. Whatever that message may be, your guess is as good as mine.